Caserta

Elena’s love is tougher than vendetta.
But in the bedroom everything takes longer.
Gino tends her
as carefully as the lance-shaped leaves
of the rose-bay in Castle Garden.
The faint vanilla scent of his hands excites her.

Summer’s heat has left
and all the color has come back to their rooms.
Rose and rare, white oleander bouquets,
their poisonous milk contained within slim boughs,
compliment the baby’s delicate complexion.
She looks like Raphael’s infants.

Elena sings, Ciao, Ciao, Bambina,
pinches off shriveled brown blossoms
and changes stale water in the vase.
Gino plucks strings of harmony
on his violin
while Sempronia sleeps in her basket.

With the child strapped on her back, Elena boards
the bus to market in Santa Maria Capua Vetere
and buys the roundest pomegranates,
while Gino winds through Saturday-choked streets
driving a horse-drawn cab for tourists,
so that on Sunday, Elena will have a new pink dress.